


Wall of Breath

by cognomen



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 21:48:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/679234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is awake when the man comes and dismisses his nurse in stunted, deeply accented Turkish, but he pretends not to be. James wishes often that he weren't, anyway - the hospital is little more than a brick hut which seems to have never heard of morphine, so he pretends that he is sleeping most of the time. It takes up most of his focus, distracts him from the pain to block the light out with his eyelids and hold his breath to even measures of eight. It is something to fixate on other than the twin stabs of pain in his chest and shoulder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wall of Breath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queen_insane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_insane/gifts).



He is awake when the man comes and dismisses his nurse in stunted, deeply accented Turkish, but he pretends not to be. James wishes often that he weren't, anyway - the hospital is little more than a brick hut which seems to have never heard of morphine, so he pretends that he is sleeping most of the time. It takes up most of his focus, distracts him from the pain to block the light out with his eyelids and hold his breath to even measures of eight. It is something to fixate on other than the twin stabs of pain in his chest and shoulder.

The almost psychological grind of the embedded bullet against his collarbone, where he had slapped the surgeon's hand away and told them to leave it be, reminds him with every breath what he was carrying with him as a safeguard for hope. Or perhaps it was just stubbornness. 

But the man sits and waits, un-deterred by James' play at sleep, reaches out - and James has to stop himself from twitching in surprise when heavy fingers settle over the mass of bandages, gently. Exploring. Unhesitant.

It is the first non-clinical touch James has felt since he'd resigned himself to death. Fitting that it should hurt. 

"I know you aren't sleeping," is what the man says, after a time of quiet. He tuts over the bandages, folding back a corner of the thin, dirty hospital blanket for a better look.

James opens his eyes - the other has seen him, he might as well have the same information. There is a shock of impeccably dyed bottle blonde hair with not a strand out of place over sleepy, un-shining blue eyes. No sign of beard or five o'clock shadow. The mouth carried the burden of expression, now open in a smile two degrees from an icy snarl, revealing white-perfect teeth just as straight and in order as his suit.

"How did you know?" James asks, not because he's curious, but because he wants to see if the plastic facade stays in place, when this man - another spy or at the very least an equivalent predator - moves and speaks.

"I didn't." It does. "But if you had been really asleep, you wouldn't have heard, and there was no one else to see me make a fool of myself."

His smile turns grin, and he lets the pause hang in his strange accent, like he'd first learned to speak in a language that didn't need the same sounds, before he shrugs theatrically and continues, "I took a gamble."  
-

It takes no time at all for Bond to accept his presence. James discovers he has a weakness for talking when he is lost and injured. Talking to Silva is as easy as speaking to himself in the mirror, not that James has ever had that habit. 

"I think it's worthwhile to pick up what MI6 throws away," Silva is saying, as he turns the drive over in his hands once while Bond watches. James can put the pieces together for himself - this was the man behind the one he had struggled with over that very item. The one up the food chain that the other 00's would be stumbling all over themselves to bring in. James should be keeping him close because it's his best chance at salvaging the situation, because it means a higher chance of capture for queen and country, but he can't quite bring himself to care.

"They believe you're dead," Silva says, and then the hard drive is folded into the pocket at the hip of his jacket, and James never sees it again. "But _I_ thought better of you. Some irony there, hmm?"

James sinks into a sullen, thoughtful silence. He closes his eyes and listens while Silva speaks - he has come day by day to sit at Bond's bedside. James has to say very little, in actuality - Silva already knows him, from files and mission reports. He has more official information on Bond than Bond himself does.

And James is finished with knowing people unofficially. At first, he simply hadn't protested Silva's presence, his voice and the long sounds he used to put emphasis into his words. Then, James had just appreciated the steadiness. It's a slow con. James appreciates it for what it's worth - it's been a long time since anyone bothered to take their time with him, even to sway him from his loyalties and into darker pursuits.

MI6 still hasn't come for him. Their lack of faith - Silva brings him a paper that reports his death - is what affords James all the time in the world to be seduced. And in the end - now - he thinks: when one has been discarded like trash, one should take up somewhere that appreciated rubbish. 

When he finally limps out of the hospital, it's Silva that's holding him up.  
-

"You know what I'm planning is going to hurt her," Silva says, looking back from his computer like a teacher making a point, as James lounges nearby with a book balanced in one hand. James gets tired quickly these days, but he has been pushing himself to recover his skills. He can see how the parts of the plan he has been given - not all of it, Silva is smarter than that - will come together.

"You can't make an omelette..." James says, because he thinks M can take it; because he is miserable and wants to do this, but equally he wants to fail at it. Because he wants to see how far Silva will go as a tool to measure his own convictions.

"No, I suppose you can't at that," Silva answers, and his fingers flex delicately over the keyboard, before he rises, stretches himself. James sees again that strange echo between them as Silva approaches, and touches his shoulder with gentle fingers that know the exact location of the scars, and then he draws a line with his pointer and middle fingers straight down, running his hands firmly over James' thighs. He sighs in some complex array of emotions James cannot yet read. 

They are echoes - and James wonders if Silva does not want to fail at this as much as he does.   
-

"Tomorrow," Silva breathes, and now they are closer and James has no interest in talking, but Silva pushes his hips up in only shallow, hard thrusts that blanks Bond's mind with frustrated impatience. He claws the headboard they are propped against, tries to pull himself up, but Silva is stronger than he looks. His arms are wrapped around James' waist holding him just where he wants him.

"I need you to go back to her James," Silva continues, soft and breathless, but more determined than Bond has heard him sound in a long time. He realizes that while they are fucking, something is changing - some major step in Silva's plan has started to shape and take hold, and Silva pushes up sharply and shatters James' train of thought as if he had sensed it. "Her whole world will have come apart, because we have been cruel. We have been so. Cruel - in waking her."

He punctuates his words by dragging James down over his own lap, by pushing deep and letting James grip at the headboard and try to keep up, try to find a way to think when all he wants to do is let his mind go quiet and let them use their bodies against each other like weapons, but Silva has to keep speaking. Even when James turns his nails against Silva's deeply scarred back, even when he lets his teeth close hard on a shoulder, the answering stabs of nails into his lower back as Silva fucks him are not even a portion of the abuse he wants, that Silva knows he wants, and yet holds back.

"Her world will be upside down and she will need you," and then his voice travels lower in his chest, and the smoothness of it unspools into a rougher surface, spreading into a growl. "We will need her to need you."

"Shut up," is what James says, into skin marred with old imperfections, and he rakes his nails down Silva's back until he feels the muscles tremble underneath and they can finish in silence, like the world is ending. He doesn't forget the way it ends in shaking, both of their abused bodies pushed too long, too hard. He doesn't forget the weakness in his shoulder that screams pain until Silva presses his palm to it and pushes, braces the muscles up until the tension can go out of them.  
-

He doesn't forget, later - though he can see in Silva's eyes behind the clear glass that the other man hasn't underestimated his ability to still bite - James has not forgotten how to eat rat, after all. James sees the fear that Bond has used him and now will throw him away crawl slowly and steadily behind the unwavering, dull blue gaze. The sleepy expression does not change, it's not that: it's Bond's own reflection there. 

And then James punches the release code into the panel by the door, and Silva walks free and unhindered into MI6, reaching up to touch James' face affectionately.

"Did you have a plan if I had changed my mind?" James asks, because he can't help himself.

"Oh yes, James," Silva laughs, and he lets his touch linger, then card through the hair at the back of James' neck, to let him know what a good dog he's been. "But it was so _dramatic_. I like it better this way - hmm? Shall we?"


End file.
